Selected Stories

by Katherine Mansfield, Vincent O'Sullivan (Editor)

This edition includes thirty-five of Katherine Mansfield's short stories with explanatory annotations. With the exception of the first four stories, all were written within a period of ten years. These stories, and the correspondence following, reflect the urgency of a writer who knew her time was limited. All but four of the texts of the stories reprinted here are versions that Mansfield herself revised or selected. Eighteen critical essays are featured that collectively suggest the changing emphases in how Mansfield has been read by critics.

With the exception of the first four stories, all were written within a period of ten years. These stories, and the letters following, reflect the urgency of a writer who knew her time was limited. All but four of the texts of the stories reprinted here are versions that Mansfield herself revised or selected.

Twenty excerpts from Mansfield’s correspondence address the craft of writing and her own views on her work, subjects rarely broached in her many letters.

"Criticism" includes eighteen essays that collectively suggest the changing emphases in how Mansfield has been read by critics. Contributors include fellow writers Rebecca West, T. S. Eliot, Katherine Anne Porter, V. S. Pritchett, Elizabeth Bowen, and Frank O’ Connor, as well as biographers Claire Tomalin and Vincent O’Sullivan, among others.

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, 20th Century, Literature, Read For School, Modern Classics

440 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp) was a prominent New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including "Miss Brill", "Prelude", "The Garden Party", "The Doll's House", and later works such as "The Fly", are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.

Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.

Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.

Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.

Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.

Reviews

[sAmAnE · Rating 4 out of 5]

گفته میشه منسفیلد برجسته‌ترین نویسنده انگلیسی زبان در زمینه‌ی داستان‌ها کوتاهه.
از این نویسنده مجموعه داستان گاردن پارتی هم خونده بودم.
شامل ۱۵ داستان هر کدوم حدودا ۴ یا ۵ صفحه.( فقط داستان خلیج یکم طولانی‌تر بود‌😉)

[emma]

brb becoming a genius

[Sana · Rating 4 out of 5]

یک مجموعه‌ی داستان بسیار خواندنی و جذاب بود برام
قلم این نویسنده منو یاد آلیس مونرو میندازه.
بنظرم داستان های کوتاه نوشتنشون خیلی سخته
ولی یسری نویسنده ها برای اینجور نوشتن داستان ها متولد شده اند.
خوشحالم که دوتا کتاب از این نویسنده دارم😍

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

The packaging sets the right tone for this collection of short stories, matching art and literary periods. To behold: Blue Beads (1910) by John Duncan Fergusson, a Scottish Colourist, graces the cover, and look at the shades of green on that face; the Wild Beasts (les Fauves) are also evoked in this book, as are Gauguin and Matisse, individually.

Alas, I generally seem to prefer paintings to writings from that time, and while Katherine Mansfield scores points here and there, such a generous assemblage of (often nonsensical) stories may have been a bit much for my appetite.

Looking up various details as I went along, in the end I found the author to live a more interesting life than her characters, and maybe what I ought to have picked up was a biography.

[Banafsheh · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتاب در واقع جلد دوم گاردن پارتی محسوب میشه. مجموعه ای از داستانهای کوتاه کاترین منسفیلد به انتخاب و ترجمه نرگس انتخابی.
پانزده داستان کوتاه توی این مجموعه گنجونده شده. من از بین داستانها «خلیج»، «کودکی که خسته بود»، «سم»، «مگس» و خود «یک فنجان چای» رو بیشتر از بقیه دوست داشتم.

منسفیلد هم مثل چخوف از زندگی روزمره مینویسه. توی داستانهاش هیچ قهرمانی نیست. شروع و پایان قصه هاش ناگهانیه ولی اون حس مطبوعی که بعد از تموم شدن هر قصه میاد سراغ آدم، اون حسی که میگی منظورت رو فهمیدم از نوشتن این قصه، حسی که شاید با خوندن رمانهای بلند هم بهت دست نده، اون حس رو من همیشه از خوندن داستانها گرفتم.
به نظرم نقطه مشترک منسفیلد و چخوف که من خیلی دوستش دارم اینه که فقط قصه میگن. قصه آدمهای زندگیمون رو. نتیجه نمیگیرن. نتیجه رو مثل یه جمله قصار نمیزارن وسط قصه اشون. فقط قصه میگن ولی خواننده بعد از تموم شدن هر قصه هدف و نتیجه رو میگیره یا بهتر بگم حسش میکنه. اینه که منو حسابی جذب داستانهای کوتاه این دو نفر کرده.
یک اعترافی هم لازمه بکنم: من داستانهای «گاردن پارتی» رو خیلی خیلی بیشتر از «یک فنجان چای» دوست داشتم.

[Essareh · Rating 4 out of 5]

«ببین... من هیچ زندگی بیرونی‌ای ندارم. اسم خیلی چیزها را بلد نیستم، مثلاً اسم درخت‌ها و این‌جور چیزها. هیچ‌وقت هم متوجه جاها و اسباب و اثاث و قیافه آدم‌ها نمی‌شوم. همه اتاق‌ها به نظرم شکل هم هستند‌، یک جایی که آدم بنشیند و چیز بخواند یا حرف بزند...»

از داستان «روان‌شناسی»

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mansfield was revered to the point of envy as a writer by Virginia Woolf. Her stories are written in a distinctive style, somehow spare and yet lush, usually accessible and emotionally charged, with extraordinary characters, often so well realised that they take up residence in the reader's consciousness. I read this as I began my solitary travels in Brazil, and Kezia followed me everywhere through those months; her longing for her grandmother's unconditional love and the security of her embraces reflected my constant mindfulness of my family and especially my mother's concern for my safety.

However, the genius of these stories goes much deeper than aesthetic success and emotional resonance. They are innovative, form-breaking and rich in critical thought. The Aloe and Prelude critique the subjugation of women by the construction of their sexuality and roles, both through the characters thoughts, and structurally, by refusing the climax/resolution structure of traditional narrative. Rather they are excerpts from a fluid cycle incorporating moments of ecstatic pleasure and self-awareness/development.

Mansfield's use of momentary 'bliss' (one of her stories has this title, and actually explicitly discusses the self-engulfing state of bliss) is more sophisticated than the naive aestheticism of Wilde (maybe I should say his disciples rather than slander an important writer): it affirms the inexpressible pleasure of being alive, drawing the reader directly into the immediacy of the ecstatic moment, but it goes on to develop the feeling in relation to dramatic irony and other pleasures-of-reading. It reflects Barthes' concept of pleasure-as-suspension, in which ecstatic moments have a subversive function, shrugging off attempts to appropriate them to serve restrictive constructions of identity such as gender.

Commentators have pointed out that Mansfield is part of the innovative strain of modernism that shortened the unit of time in fiction from the year (in every pre-twentieth century novel, every traditional novel) to the day, allowing for a focus on the epiphany, the 'one blazing moment' in Mansfield's words, which she said allows us to 'appreciate the importance of one "spiritual event" rather than another'. This helps explain why short story form has been a playground for innovative writers since Mansfield, Woolf, Joyce, Lawrence etc.

[Boris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Много ми беше приятно да чета разказите на Катрин Мансфийлд. Ако знаех, че е такъв голям талант, щях много по-рано да ги докопам. Няколко важни неща за нея: Тя е глас от Нова Зеландия, което прави перспективата ѝ на англопишещ автор доста специална. Вирджиния Улф ѝ е завиждала, движели са в един литературен кръг. След като прочетох тези Избрани разкази, разбрах защо Улф ѝ е завиждала. Мансфийлд е много по-добра от нея в разказите.

Всеки разказ е за интересен герой, който има нещо много тъмно, неясно, мрачно в душата си. Никога не разбираме какво точно е то, но разбираме, че го има чрез мислите им, импресиите им за други герои, действията им в микросюжетите, в които Мансфийлд ги е сложила.

Мисля, че тази авторка заслужава повече популярност като класически автор. Просто е много добра.

[Kianoush Mokhtarpour · Rating 4 out of 5]

گویا دو جور داستان کوتاه داریم. بگوئیم کلاسیک و غیرکلاسیک. داستان کلاسیک ابتدا و انتها دارد، ماجرا و حادثه دارد، و مضمونش روشن و واضح است. داستان غیرکلاسیک اینها را ندارد. گاهی برشی‌ست بی‌سروته از زندگی کاراکتری، بی آنکه هیچ واقعه یا ماجرای خاصی درش رخ دهد، و خواننده را هاج و واج می‌گذارد که خب منظور؟ البته که کم‌تر پیش می‌آید داستانی غلفتی در یکی از این دو دسته بگنجد. اغلب داستان‌ها ترکیبی از این دو گونه‌اند، جایی بین دو سر طیف

داستان‌های کاترین منسفیلد سرجمع وسط طیف است. شاید اتفاقات خیره‌کننده نداشته باشند، ولی مضمون و 'حرف' دارند. نقطه‌ی قوتشان نمایش دقیق احساسات، پرهیز از روده‌درازی‌های بی‌مورد خسته‌کننده، و به‌خاطرماندنی بودن است. ضمن اینکه 'متمرکز' هستند. درونمایه‌ هر داستان را می‌شود با یک کلمه بیان کرد


این داستان‌ها را بیش‌تر پسندیدم

فرابرشنماخر به عروسی می‌رود
مگس
خدمتکار بانو
سم
خانه‌ی عروسکی
مگس
یک فنجان چای

[Hoora · Rating 4 out of 5]

مجموعه پانزده داستان کوتاه با موضوعات متنوع که اکثراً در مورد ازدواج و مسائل مربوط به آن هستند یا کودکی که مورد آزار و اذیت قرار می گیرد و...
به شخصه داستان های کودکی که خسته بود، چگونه پِرل باتِن دزدیده شد؟، خدمتکار و بانو، درس آواز، خانه ی عروسکی و یک فنجان چای، را دوست داشتم.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

There seem to be two schools of thought regarding what makes a great short story. (There may be more - tell me about them if you can think of any.) I'm going to call them the Bradbury School and the Chekov School. I was brought up to love the Bradbury School where-in the perfect short story tells a story and has a remarkable ending that might be a revelation or plot twist or unexpected action or possibly even an ambiguous cliff-hanger. The absolute best of these will have a crucial and memorable final sentence.

Then there's the Chekov School in which the ideal is for absolutely nothing to happen, no plot, no surprise ending, just an excruciating description of minutiae from the perspective of a usually dull or unpleasant character. Implication is everything.

Well, as you may have already guessed, I hate the Chekov School and Mansfield falls heavily into this camp. So heavily that it took most of her life to claw her way back onto her knees and stretch one hand out towards the Bradbury School before she died, depressingly young, from tuberculosis.

In this entire collection there are fewer then five stories that I really liked and they are concentrated near the beginning and end of what is a chronologically ordered selection. In those few stories we see not only acute perception of character but also hatred of class division and snobbery. Most of this book was masochistic torture and the few reasonable quality items were no compensation.

[Quaintrelle333 (Petra) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mansfield’s short stories make her readers feel as if she is allowing them a glimpse into a particular moment in the lives of her characters. I gave her stories a lower rating than her contemporary Woolf or Joyce because the medium of short stories often leaves me underwhelmed. When the story starts to get good, it ends abruptly, which you could say was her intention, but it does make me dissatisfied. While Mansfield’s prose is not difficult to read, it does require a lot of attention to detail, as Mansfield was influenced by Symbolists, psychoanalysis and Abstract Expressionism. Like Chekhov, Mansfield does not provide answers; she only raises questions, leaving the interpretation to her readers.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't find the exact collection that I own, so I'll be reviewing her, generally.

Mansfield had a talent for atmosphere, creating sensory impressions that are (still) both physically and emotionally vivid to the reader. The effect is a very solitary voice, -- yet close to the ear, and inclusive in spirit. She never argued a story. She let the story speak for itself.

To be honest, there were times I didn't quite know what she was getting at. But then, I am an idiot. About midway through, around 1918, the stories suddenly develop a kind of wholeness that makes them brilliant. I can see why Virginia Woolf admired her.

There is one thing, however, that I really must address:

"He tore the little cat out of his coat and swung it by its tail and flung it out to the sewer opening." -- from Ole Underwood, 1912

"What creepy things cats are!" -- from Bliss, 1918

"...and an old brown cat without a tail appeared from nowhere, and began greedily and silently drinking up the spill." -- from Pictures, 1919

Dude.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always a pleasure to read Mansfield. What a marvelous writer. “At the Bay”, written near the end of her life — while she was in continual misery — is truly a gorgeous story.

[Megi Kamashidze · Rating 5 out of 5]

მოკლედ, ბრიტანული ლიტერატურის კურსის ფარგლებში მომიწია მენსფილდის კითხვა, ჰოდა, ეს ქალი აღმოჩნდა ძალიან მაგარი და მამაცი, ნამდვილად არ იქნებოდა მარტივი ასე ღიად წერა ქალებზე და მათ რეალურ ემოციებზე ვიქტორიანულ ბრიტანეთში. ყველა მოთხრობა, რაც წავიკითხე ძალიან ლამაზი და გულწრფელია. ტყუილად კი არ ამბობდა ვირჯინია, ერთადერთია ვის ნაწერებზეც ვეჭვიანობო <3

[Samir Rawas Sarayji · Rating 4 out of 5]

A modernist writer who doesn’t shy away from purely character-driven stories. Her technique of free indirect discourse (in many of the stories) takes some getting used to, but then it’s sweet sailing. The stories seem almost frivolous on the surface, but dig a little deeper and this is very far from the truth. They are as complex and thought-provoking as all good literature ought to be.

[Xandre · Rating 5 out of 5]

profound and delightful, near-perfect short stories...why has it taken me this long to get around to mansfield? i enjoyed reading this so much. almost can’t believe that such a writer came out of little old WGTN, NZ. but then again, of course! imploring all my goodreads friends to get their hands on a book of hers someday soon, too

[payam Mohammadi · Rating 3 out of 5]

بعد از خوندن مجموعه داستان"گاردن پارتی" انتظاراتم از کاترین منسفیلد خیلی بالا بود اما متاسفانه این مجموعه داستان تا حدودی تو ذوقم زد.
غیر از داستان‌های در خلیج، مگس و یک فنجان چای بقیه‌ی داستان‌هاش ضعیف بودن.

[Pardis10 · Rating 5 out of 5]

«چرا به محض فرا رسیدن شب، احساساتی چنین متفاوت به قلب آدم راه می‌یابد؟ چرا بیدار ماندن در زمانی که همه خوابیده‌اند این‌قدر هیجان‌انگیز است؟ دیروقت است، خیلی دیروقت! با این همه، لحظه به لحظه آدم بیدارتر می‌شود، گویی آهسته و با هر نفس، و پا به دنیای تازه‌ای می‌گذارد، دنیایی خارق‌العا‌ده و بسیار شور‌انگیز‌تر و مهیج‌تر از دنیای روز. و این احساس عجیب چیست که آدم گمان می‌کند همدست شب است؟ آرام و دزدکی در اتاق خودش راه می‌رود. چیزی را از روی میز توالت برمی‌دارد و دوباره بی‌صدا سر جایش می‌گذارد. و همه چیز، حتی پایه‌های تختخواب، آدم را می‌شناسند، به آدم جواب می‌دهند، شریک رازهای آدم هستند…
آدم روزها خیلی از اتاقش خوشش نمی‌آید. اصلا به آن فکر هم نمی‌کند. می‌آید تو و می‌رود بیرون، در باز می‌شود و بسته، و گنجه غژ‌غژ می‌کند. آدم لب تخت می‌نشیند، کفش‌هایش را عوض می‌کند و باز تند می‌رود بیرون. یکراست می‌رود سراغ آینه، دو تا سنجاق به موهایش می‌زند، به بینی‌اش پودر می‌مالد و باز می‌رود بیرون. اما حالا… یکمرتبه اتاق عزیز می‌شود. یک اتاق کوچولوی بامزه و دوست داشتنی. مال خودت است. وای، چه لذتی دارد مالکیت بر اشیا! مال من، مال خودم!»

[Tatiana Zhandarmova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mansfield's writing is SO BEAUTIFUL!!! I got to explore it in my ENGL110 lectures but wanted to continue reading and finish it even after the semester was over... good stuff. :D

[Nyah Dalrymple · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m actually embarrassed at how long it’s taken to finish this 😭😭 I got waylaid halfway through by a massive reading flop era so I might need to revisit this book at a later date 😔

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

First ever foray into Katherine Mansfield.
First off, I’ll be honest and just get it out that I didn’t quite know what Mansfield was getting at for the most times. I found her writing to be ambiguous especially at the beginning, but as I read on, I began to get a sense of understanding of her stories.

Some of my favourite are:
• A Cup of Tea
• The Little Girl
• The Garden Party
• Late at Night
• Two Tuppenny Ones, Please
• The Black Cap
• A Suburban Fairy Tale
• Sixpence
• How Pearl Button was Kidnapped
• The Tiredness of Rosabel

She liked trapping her characters in unresolved epiphany. They had sense of duty to do what’s right, or, what will get them out of their appointed roles, and yet nothing. I would be lying if I didn’t feel like I’m one of her characters with all of my never ending resolutions that usually came up to nothing. In short, they were real—us. She let the stories speak for themselves through the vivid simple scenes and ultimately, her characters left their impressions.

It is both satisfying and unsatisfying. She left me full of conjectures of what could’ve been and what happened to these people following the events. Her writing is like a quiet storm—came silently, and left everything devastated in its wake.

[Calzean · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are nearly 100 years old but are still very readable, enjoyable and immensely clever. Mansfield was ahead of her time in being able to depict the discriminatory practices of the English class system with all its snobbery and false airs. She also had great empathy for the working class who loyally toiled to support the undeserved privileged.

She also wrote about a range of people - children, the elderly, the naive, the rich, the poor. Quiet brilliant.

[Rachael Lum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her stories are focused on building the characters rather than the plot, a style that took me a while to get used to. Some endings had me going 'wait...what just happened', only for me to reread and realise that it was nothing. Nothing happens.

Instead the beauty is in the sparsity and subtle descriptions, which adds a certain emotional vividness. I'm not normally fond of Modernist writing, but I enjoyed some of Mansfield's stories.

[Noah Goats · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lovely collection of beautifully written stories about well drawn characters who find themselves in pivotal situations in their lives. The first two or three stories were my least favorite in the collection, but I'm glad I stuck with it. What a tragedy that Mansfield died so young.

[مسعود · Rating 3 out of 5]

ظرافت توصیف‌ها، فضاسازی، شخصیت‌پردازی، نکته‌سنجی در توصیف ارتباط آدم‌ها
این‌ها نقاط قوت داستان‌های منفیلد هستند.
البته اگر به دنبال پلات و ماجرا و شگفتی و ... باشید داستان‌ها تقریبا چیزی برای ارائه ندارند. اما فضای خوش و حس و حال خوبی را برایتان رقم می‌زنند و گاهی در توصیف یک رفتار از شخصیت یا در توصیف انگیزه او چشمتان برق می‌زند، جهان داستان‌ها هم آنقدر زنده و آنقدر خوش هست که بعدترها گاهی دلتان بخواهد سری دوباره به دنیای داستانهای این کتاب بزنید

[holly gc · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful array of Mansfield’s work. She has such an alluring and delicate charm to her narrative. Her writing touches upon youth, differing perspectives, dual meanings, fate, and insecurity. She evokes the dissatisfaction of life but simultaneously the hyper-idealisation that stems from our disappointment. Nothing is unequivocally real; there is always a ‘stage’, a meta-narrative, an orchestra of emotions conducted by nature, ironically supernatural. Her characters often paint their feelings through the melancholic, silvery outside world. Mansfield realises that we rarely own up to our own emotions, often placing them on a glossy cake-stand, leaving them to dry and be eaten up. She allows her characters to become overgrown and thorny, without a single straightforward facet to them. This wandering and mutable nature is very modernist and subsequently, vitalist (vitalism engaged with life as a constant process of metamorphosis) illustrating this constant sudden change in Mansfield’s characters. Sometimes there are sudden fires, bursts of desire and youth, drains of energy, of melancholy, of dullness. There is a grey draping cloth around the world that Mansfield torments us with. But she makes a fairy-lit den out of it, filled with half-shadowy excitement. Often her characters glimpse sight of the greyness again but will sometimes grow back into their dream-like, clueless states. A comforting but torturous song sung ‘over and over’.

[James Wilkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a little difficult to get into. Some of her themes I found initially ambiguous but this panned out in relation to the number of stories I read. What becomes clear is the simple scenes that are evoked and how these straightforward scenes are made to symbolise the subtle inner workings of her fabulous characters. The heartbreaking truths of many of her stories is how her characters seem on the brink of making beneficial changes to their lives but are somehow trapped or harried into taking the easy option and staying in their appointed roles. It is a rewarding selection of stories by a sophisticated writer, whose writing is at times beautifully evocative in its almost poetic imagery as well as extraordinarily fluid in her analogies between scenes and characters.

[Phillip Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A selection of 73 stories originally published in 1965 by Alfred A Knopf. Contains the amateurish "From a German Pension" stories, the great "Bliss", the two masterpieces which are surely novel fragments about her childhood, "Prelude" and "At the Bay", and the final work which contains many accomplished stories. About 12 good stories here in a career which was cut short before it really developed. No criticism I've noticed explores Mansfield's relation to Chekhov and many seem to credit Mansfield with the latter's achievement. A great writer who may have been greater had she lived, but who wrote some absorbing and enchanting work.

[Saide · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kathrine Mansfield is a true master of un resolved epiphany...Her characters never find out what can be done to make thing right. Like Tchekouf, she shows the gun in first chapter and for sure will shoot the barrel in the end.
She is a pioneer in feminist writing. Short stories such as Miss Brill, The Fly, Je ne parle pa francies, doll house, Bliss are among the best short stories of the world.